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Handhelds Hardware

AT&T Crippling BlackBerry for iPhone? 211

0xdeadbeef writes "BlackBerryCool got a tip that not only was AT&T removing GPS functionality from their version of the BlackBerry 8820, they're doing it so it won't show up the iPhone. While carriers crippling phones to stop them from competing with pay-per-use services is nothing new, this might be the first time they've done it to make their other products seem less diminished."
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AT&T Crippling BlackBerry for iPhone?

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  • sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18, 2007 @03:55PM (#20279565)
    The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.
    • Re:sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DoraLives ( 622001 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @03:57PM (#20279587)
      > The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.

      Trust me on this one ..... it's worse.
    • "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."
    • Re:sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Saturday August 18, 2007 @09:28PM (#20282223) Journal

      The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.
      I take your point, but there's something new in this type of behavior that we're seeing in all sorts of corporations. Instead of the traditional "free market" belief that "you give the customer what they want" and "supply and demand", there's a sense that we're the ones who are obliged to give the corporations what they want.

      Let's face it, it's been some years now since consumers had anything like the power wielded by corporations. They pay the government and the government works for them. We, in turn, exist to give the corporations what they want, which is profits. Our desires don't enter into the equation.

      The "free market", if it ever existed, is a deeply flawed concept. No matter how its done, the story always ends the same way. We are the consumables.
      • I agree, but the problem is not the market - the problem is the average US consumer is too brand-oriented, and will happily pay out (and upgrade) again and again without thinking what s/he is buying and without shopping around. These people allow monopolies to develop by not playing their part in the market. I used to think it's an excess of disposable income, but after seeing the iPhone phenomenon, I changed my mind.

        Here in Europe there's no stigma about not buying brands. We'll buy what works well enough
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by foniksonik ( 573572 )
          As a person who uses Apple products... I'd gladly purchase a non-Apple product if I could find one which was worth my money. I've tried buying other brands, non-brands, etc. and always end up with buyer's remorse... Apple just makes good products.

          Regarding TFA... AT&T is free to do what they want with their products, though I don't understand why they'd choose this option. iPhone is a consumer product, Blackberry is a Business User product. They are targeted at two separate and distinct markets. Who car
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) *
            But look at how readily Apple, now experiencing some measure of success, can ignore the desires of their own customers. Do you know how many consumers want to buy OSX to run on their own custom-built hardware?

            How about how many iPod users want to be able to listen to FLAC files, or be able to use their iPods the way that they want them without violating the end user license. Speaking of end-user licenses, those are some of the best examples of the way the free market has betrayed consumers. Now, we buy a
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      Actually, that should be:
      "The new at&t feels alot like the old AT&T."
      They're smaller, but bolder.
  • by SimHacker ( 180785 ) * on Saturday August 18, 2007 @03:56PM (#20279581) Homepage Journal

    A: AT&T

    Yeah, I know: old joke. Used to be IBM instead of AT&T. But this story just proves it again! It's funny because it's true.

    -Don

  • USA - rest of world (Score:5, Informative)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:01PM (#20279631) Homepage
    And in the mean time, in the rest of the world, crippled phones DON'T EXIST. Because the phone you use is independent from the carrier. Welcome to open standards (GSM).
    • by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) * on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:05PM (#20279691) Homepage Journal
      I've found you can find happiness in slavery.--Reznor
    • by Espectr0 ( 577637 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:59PM (#20280105) Journal
      It isn't pretty in all of the rest of the world either. In latin america, all phones are locked to the carrier that provides them. While they don't cripple the phones as much as verizon (my v3 came with all features enabled), we can't choose carriers. GSM doesn't mean that the phone is free from carrier lockdown.
      • GSM doesn't mean that the phone is free from carrier lockdown

        It is if you buy your own phone and THEN get the SIM card from the carrier.

        Make the maths: i bet even there the total cost of the 1 or 2 years subscription you're locked into if you get a phone from the carrier is more than the price of a new phone.

        As an added benefict, subscriptions for SIM Only users (those that bring their own phone) are usually cheaper for the same number of minutes/texts/whatever than the equivalent subscriptions with phone.

    • Yup, exactly the reason why I bailed on Verizon. Their phones wouldn't do Bluetooth OBEX transfers unless you happened to get a specific phone with an "accidental" firmware revision where they forgot to lock down OBEX. Add to that the mandatory Verizon crippleware UI, which slows down the majority of the baseline phones and sometimes results in confusing menus.

      I purchased an unlocked RIZR in December 06 and brought it to a T-Mobile store. They gladly ran the FCC number port on the Verizon number and acti
    • by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @06:45PM (#20280923)

      I live in America. I have an uncrippled phone, because I opted to buy my own. I could either buy an uncrippled phone, or let the telco subsidize my purchase, but they want to cripple the phone so I would end up paying more money in the long term. Ultimately, I decided that to replace my uncrippled phone with one crippled in ways I didn't care about, but that was superior in other ways.

      Let's be clear, you can bitch about the loss of rights companies force on you. Just be prepared to pay full-price for those things. Alternatively, you can buy a phone where they cripple the bluetooth, just use USB to move things, and say, "Hey, bluetooth isn't worth $150 to me to buy an uncrippled version."

      It's actually more freedom in the US.

      • I have an uncrippled phone, because I opted to buy my own. I could either buy an uncrippled phone, or let the telco subsidize my purchase, but they want to cripple the phone so I would end up paying more money in the long term.
        So is $700 the subsidized price of the iPhone. If so, ouch. If not, then why is AT&T/Apple crippling a full priced device? Maybe people should speak with their wallets and not buy it. I know I have. But that wasn't because it is locked. They've just priced it out of my range.
        • by G-funk ( 22712 )
          They've definitely shot themselves in the foot with all the missing features and lockdown of the iPhone. The price is fine IMO, if it had GPS 3G and could actually do all the "phone stuff" any old nokia could do, I'd have shipped one over from the states the day they went on sale.
        • by arivanov ( 12034 )
          "Blackberry user" and "speaking with wallet". This is probably about right. All addicts do speak with their wallets. Giving the crack dealer as much as he wants to get that wonderful fix from a vibrator slotted in the immediate vicinity of their belt buckle.
          On a more serious note, the BB is a business product. Nearly all businesses buy the phones unlocked. They can get bulk rates, discounts, etc and the entire "stay in contract to get the phone subsidised" malarkey no longer makes sense.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Reaperducer ( 871695 )

      And in the mean time, in the rest of the world, crippled phones DON'T EXIST. Because the phone you use is independent from the carrier. Welcome to open standards (GSM).

      False.

      Locked, subsidized, and crippled phones exist on a number of carriers in Europe and Asia. I've seen them in England, France, Belgium, Austria, and Japan.

      You sound like someone who's been drinking too much Anti-U.S. Kool-Aid and has never shopped around for mobile phone service outside the United States.

      And for the record, I h

      • And for the record, I have an UNLOCKED GSM phone that I use on T-Mobile here in the United States. You don't have to buy a locked phone. Just just have to be dumb to do it.

        Depends, if you're buying one without a contract, then yes that is stupid. If you are taking the subsidized phone, then it really depends upon how much it costs, and how much the ability to bring it over to another carrier is worth it to you.

        I personally have no problem with the idea of a phone locked to the carrier that subsidized it. I just wish they could unlock it after the contract period was over.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      And in the mean time, in the rest of the world, crippled phones DON'T EXIST. Because the phone you use is independent from the carrier. Welcome to open standards (GSM).
      You do realize you can just use pretty much any old GSM phone on AT&T's network don't you? Or Tmobile's for that matter.
    • by arivanov ( 12034 )
      Yeah, bollocks.

      Tell that to vodafone UK who removed the VOIP from all recent nokias.
    • by hughk ( 248126 )
      Not quite correct. I have seen functionality (PTT) dropped from menus because the supplying carrier (Vodafone) didn't support it. This is not a SIM thing, it is because the carrier has a customised software image.
    • I wish people would quit raggin' on about this. Yes we know the US system sucks. Deal with it. Or don't move here. Or move/stay to/in England (or for even better phone service, Germany).

      As much as I hate the US system, you still miss the main point about it: a single US carrier is probably bigger (more money), than every UK carrier combined. It's all about the money, and in this case, the US consumer is the loser. (Sound familiar, cough, Microsoft, cough). However, successfully large monopolistic

  • by Technician ( 215283 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:03PM (#20279673)
    Many carriers think they are a monopoly and don't want to have their low end rob the profit from the high end.

    They are forgetting something. There is competition. They should strive to make all of their products and services more valuable to consumers.

    Here is what we have so far..
    1 An i-phone which is cool who's bill comes in a box shipped by UPS Oh and by the way is has a monopoly carrier.

    2 A Blackberry. They are obtainable from several carriers, but AT&T cripples them worse than other carriers.

    3 A Blackberry on another carrier.

    4.. The rest of the market

    If you avoid #1 due to the carrier issues and monster bills, you are now likely to avoid #2 for both the service and carrier reputation. Just what were they thinking? They don't hold a monopoly on Blackberries.

    http://www.bbhub.com/2006/09/18/rating-the-major-b lackberry-carrier-retailers-who-gets-it-and/ [bbhub.com]
    • The monster bills come with any phone on AT&T. And they don't equate to the cost of said bill. For example I got a iPhone bill that was 48 double sided pages long but all the charges were free and included in my plan.
    • Many carriers think they are a monopoly and don't want to have their low end rob the profit from the high end.

      There is indeed competition in some places and in others they just scare you from leaving with their high service termination fees.
      • There is indeed competition in some places and in others they just scare you from leaving with their high service termination fees.

        Very true,--- until the 2 year contract is up. Consumers have a memory of the problems and pains they have with a carrier. Churn is very real.

        2 year contracts may only slow it down to the next contract renewal. Better service would reduce churn.
    • This is nice and lovley until you realize that everyone cripples the service, so you have no choice.

      I do not know if this is the case here, but the market goes that way. Why bother offering something when your competition doesn't offer it either? More importantly, when all the customer cares about is that he pays 0.01 cent less with you than with your competing company.

      Look at the ads from the various cell providers. Does anyone mention his services? Or is all they push their "low" price?

      Generally, you'll s
      • This is nice and lovley until you realize that everyone cripples the service, so you have no choice.

        Actually I do have a choice. In the world of instant gratification many see the glass as half full, ie there are features that don't work.

        I look at the package offered, and then move on.

        Case in point. I bought a cell phone with the understanding that it is just a phone. We deliberately had the carrier eliminate all web access. They said "text messaging won't work". I said "Good, neither does the company
      • This is nice and lovley until you realize that everyone cripples the service, so you have no choice.
        Not every carrier cripples the service. If you believe this, you either haven't done your research or live out in the sticks where there are only one or two carriers.
        • Actually, Europe has usually more carriers per country than is healthy. A market of maybe 8 million people shared by 6 providers.

          Still, none of them offers a full service portfolio. I was quite amazed when I was in the US to see what my cell could do if it's allowed to. Push to talk? Coupling cell and landline? Unheard of in Europe. Similar things apply to the contracts. Free text messages and/or free minutes with your service fee? Impossible. Ok, this is slowly changing, but for the longest time, none of t
    • I think too many people overlook the actual product when considering a "carrier". Frankly, I could care less what carrier my iPhone works on, because the iPhone is great. I didn't buy my phone because of or in spite of the carrier; I bought it because it is a good phone. Seriously, how many people go into a store thinking what carrier they want to buy? No, people go in wanting the product, not the service provider. I blame the US business model because in the UK I had the option to use any carrier with
  • by intx13 ( 808988 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:04PM (#20279679) Homepage
    I'm not so sure why AT&T would want to do this. Even though I wouldn't think that the iPhone and the Blackberry compete directly, at least prior to this decision AT&T sold one popular device with GPS functionality. Why they would change so that they now sell no devices (at the iPhone/Blackberry level) with GPS capabilities?

    I could understand if Apple wanted this to happen... but how does this help AT&T? AT&T doesn't/shouldn't care if people are buying Blackberries over iPhones on the basis of GPS, so long as the Blackberry comes from AT&T. If they believed that GPS was the tipping point, those customers are now buying nothing from AT&T.

    Doesn't seem so smart to me.
  • how retarted. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:04PM (#20279685) Homepage
    The GPS in every cellphone I have ever tried was incredibly crappy anyways. The Blackberry GPs's dont get a fix unless you carefully hold them up in the air in an open field, Nextel GPS phones also suck horribly. The iPhone dies not have a GPS for two very good reasons. 1. it's a metal casing phone. 2. GPS modules in phones simply do not work so they left it out. The cheapie Magellan Gold GPS I got for $89.00 on ebay kicks the crud out of every single GPS enabled phone I have ever seen. and yes I have seen lots of them. They can not get a GPS fix from inside your pocket or on your hip, they never work in newer cars as the glare film and other tratements make the windshield electrically conductive so it blocks RF signals.

    I am sure they are disabling the GPS simply because the GPS sucks. The is the same company that 3 years ago refused to allow phones on it's network that did not have GPS's in them.
    • I dont think most cell phones have gps. They have "enhanced gps" or somesuch. They dont ever interact with gps satellites. They just know which cell tower they talked to and perhaps the nearby ones and do something like triangulation. Your cell phone knows the gps coords of the cell tower because the carrier does. So your phone asks "Hey Sprint, what is the gps of tower 581290?" Its not much more complicated than that, so the results are always going to be pretty poor compared to real gps.

      Your magellan
      • I don't know how verizon's vznavigator service works (actual GPS or tower triangulation), but it can get my current location within 10-20 feet when I allow it to locate me.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        Incorrect, most cellphone Chipsets have GPS built in, even my crappy old nextel candybar phone had a real gps you fire up the program and watch it try over the next 20 minutes to get a lock on 3 or more sattelites. while the magellan has a lock on 6 of them in 1.5 minutes and has another 4 at full strength. The phone's app shows 5 birds only at less than 50% strength. The 3 different models of blackberry I owned all did the same thing incredibly poor GPS signal reception and are typically only 6-8 channe
        • Wow. Sounds like you had crappy luck. I have a Blackberry 8800 that I got specifically because of the GPS, and it works great. Locks on to 5-8 satellites in 30 seconds or so, every time. Locks on my position, and the map starts following me, in my car. Don't even have to set it on the dashboard or anything, which my brother's Garmin GPS unit almost requires.
      • Not precisely... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Junta ( 36770 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:45PM (#20280009)
        You are correct in that it isn't a pure GPS situation in most all phones, but it doesn't mean it isn't interacting with GPS satellite signals, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS [wikipedia.org]. GPS takes more time and is more picky about quality signal from satellites. aGPS still has some degree of satellite signal being received at the phone, but either sends that data to the tower which uses it's more optimal GPS situation to provide a lock, or receives the extra data from the tower. In other words, it isn't necessarily any less precise, just potentially dependent on communication with a tower and less time needed from the point of being turned on to being able to pinpoint the location.
    • Sounds like you just have a habit of buying shitty cellphones, probably just buying them based on looks. All 3 GPS-enabled cells I've used have worked fine, including in-pocket and in car.
    • by gorfie ( 700458 )
      Are you stating that a dedicated device performs a given function better than a multi-purpose device? I think most of us would agree that this is generally true, but there are those in the world who aren't comfortable accessorizing themselves with four or five electronic gadgets.
    • The GPS-enabled Nextels we have at work routinely locate my co-workers hundreds of miles from where they actually are -- often in the middle of Lake Michigan when they're actually on dry land. Sometimes I can be looking at someone in the office in Chicago and the computer puts their "dot" in the middle of a field in Iowa.

      If Apple offered GPS in their phone as crappy as what appears to be the standard, they'd be raked over the coals for it.
  • by owlnation ( 858981 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:05PM (#20279693)
    I have to say that this seems normal behavior for any phone company the world over. I've never had the full features of any phone I've ever owned from many carriers in several countries.

    It's what phone companies do. It's usually a question of finding the provider that sucks the least.

    Although, in this case it seems a little back-to-front. I would guess that there may be users who end up with a Blackberry because they can't afford one, or their company prefers that system. I would seriously doubt there are many (non-corporation based) users who actually prefer a Blackberry now. Cost aside.

    And, can I ask that maybe it's time to have a moratorium on iPhone stories. Yes, I think it's cool too -- but I am sick and tired reading of about it. The Firehose if clogged with iPhone stories. I want to read about something else now. Thanks.
    • by Oldsmobile ( 930596 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:28PM (#20279895) Journal
      This is infact not normal behaviour, I don't know where you got this from. In countries with functioning mobile phone markets (that would be almost everywhere else except the US) the customers will quickly abandon any company cripling their phones for another one.
      • This is infact not normal behaviour, I don't know where you got this from. In countries with functioning mobile phone markets (that would be almost everywhere else except the US) the customers will quickly abandon any company cripling their phones for another one.

        You're absolutely right. Look at how Vodaphone, O2, NTT, KDDI, and other companies have been brought to their knees by crippling and locking their phones.

        Oh, wait. They haven't.

        I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. GS

  • by jht ( 5006 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:09PM (#20279729) Homepage Journal
    As long as carriers dictate what phones do or don't do, this is no big deal - it's just typical. I suspect the GPS functionality lockdown has nothing to do with iPhone, it's probably just that AT&T wants to sell their Telenav service and make money from it. The iPhone really doesn't compete in the same segment as Blackberries of any stripe, and they sell at a non-subsidized price - GPS or the lack thereof isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the Blackberry/iPhone purchase decision.

    It's not like this is rare. Heck, Verizon's locked down the OBEX capabilities on most of their Bluetooth phones so they can sell their wireless sync service. Even Apple had to bite the bullet here - since there's no subsidy on the phone and Apple pockets all the money, don't you think they'd love to sell unlocked iPhones that would work on every GSM carrier? Or sell CDMA models through Verizon or Sprint? Of course they would. But to get AT&T to sell 'em and modify the network (build out EDGE capacity and add the Visual Voicemail system) they had to agree to a multi-year exclusivity deal.

    So basically, the 8820 being modified because of Apple? I call BS. And if you want your Blackberry and you want it on AT&T, find yourself an unlocked version and just DIY. It's GSM, you can do that. It'll be unsubsidized, but at least that way it'll be a fair fight with the iPhone.

    Wait - even though iPhone is unsubsidized it's still locked. Never mind!
    • by tjrw ( 22407 )
      Precisely. I doubt that it has anything to do with the iPhone. AT&T has a track record of crippling phones that's almost as bad as Verizon's. If you want a perfect example compare the (crippled) Nokia E62 from Cingular, now AT&T, to the original version of the phone, the E61. Ooh look, no 3G, no Wifi, no SIP client. The only good thing they did was ditch the crappy proprietary Nokia connector and put a mini-usb connector on instead.

      So, I have an E61 and am using it with T-Mobile (just swapped my SIM
  • Verizon too! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dimer0 ( 461593 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:11PM (#20279745)
    Comon, this isn't just AT&T. My *Verizon* 8830 phone has been "crippled" for about 2 weeks before the iPhone came out.

    I called Verizon and inquired why my phone doesn't have the GPS turned on, and after getting to some 'data expert', I was told that the reason is Blackberry won't turn over some API or something to allow Verizon to enable this.

    Now, I doubt that's really the reason, but again - this isn't some AT&T and/or Apple stunt.

    • Fuck Verizon. Not that I've ever had them but they just suck. My buddy and I were in the store for some adapter for him and I said "iPhone". OOPS!

      The sales people swarmed on me saying that the reason they didn't have it is because Apple wanted them to do this and that; when the real issue was that Verizon is in the market to sell music at twice the price of iTunes. They didn't want this thing on their network because it would cut their music profits in half. Even more, it let you get video from YouTube and
    • Blackberry won't turn over some API or something to allow Verizon to enable this.

      That's about the fourth different reason I've heard as to why the GPS is disabled in the 8830, but the first to point the finger at RIM. First, I was told by someone at Verizon that only the 911 service used the GPS. Well, I had to explain to the customer service rep that the technology she was referencing was A-GPS [wikipedia.org], not true GPS like the Verizon marketing literature and the RIM website stated is in the 8830. The second person I spoke with a few days later swore that the GPS worked. The third person, b

  • by Anonymous Coward
    ...it sounds more like a Raspberry than a Blackberry to me!

    Sorry :-(
  • is a classic example of the FISS principle: Foot In Self Shoot.

    Not the first time our communications carriers have done that, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
  • The New Antitrust? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aldheorte ( 162967 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @04:39PM (#20279963)
    I'm never one for government regulation, but in view of the very existence of these companies in this space being based on regulation (frequency band reservation), I wonder if we need new antitrust legislation for this, a situation that the original writers of antitrust law could not have readily envisioned or comprehended? It's sort of an inverse product tying and is definitely intended to decrease competition (for example, no one can offer a competing navigation product on this device even though it clearly has the capability).

    Or perhaps we need to retroactively apply the Google points on open device access to existing as well as new bands? It can be done by Congress under the ethical directive of protecting the public commons. From a business standpoint, is a legitimate intervention when the existing leasholders of those commons are mismanaging it against the interest of overall economic activity and the public good.
  • At one time, like when the razr came out, people would just complain that the feature had been disabled so that ATT could charge for the service, or on a positive note, for security reasons. But now with the iPhone, and it's challenge to the safe designs, one has to say that Blackberry is so superior to the iPhone that ATT had to disable features to make the iPhone seem less lame.

    Of course this ignores the fact that the phones are targeted to different people. The Blackberry is the corporate phone that

  • by HumanEmulator ( 1062440 ) on Saturday August 18, 2007 @05:29PM (#20280303)

    The summary makes it sound like GPS is being removed from the phone, but the article says in first paragraph "...the US carrier has been successful in their attempts to lockdown the GPS functionality in their upcoming BlackBerry 8820 so that the only functioning 3rd party software will be TeleNav."

    Not the same thing. "Only functioning 3rd party software", means you should be able to use TeleNav and any 1st party software (ie. whatever RIM has.)

    Note: TMobile.com doesn't advertise (or even list as a feature) the GPS functionality on the BlackBerry 8800 that it is selling.

    Of course there's no doubt this unbiased reporting from "BLACKBERRYCOOL" written by someone who admits to interviewing people while drunk (http://www.blackberrycool.com/2007/05/09/004387/) is totally accurate.

  • And the great regulators we have who let cell phone companies get away with false advertising and pretty much everything else.

    You see, they aren't going to market this as "BlackBerry 8820, GPS crippled edition", they're going to sell it as an 8820.
    And then charge you $10 per month to use the GPS.

    Just like every other cell phone carrier in the USA has ripped out some features in most of their phones so they can sell some fucking "monthly service" that is vastly inferior to what is built into an uncrippled ph
  • The rest of the world's version of the RAZR V3xx has GPS as well, but not the AT&T version.
  • This is obvious nonsense. AT&T has no financial incentive to steer people away from BlackBerries (quite the opposite, in fact, BlackBerry service plans are more expensive than the standard iPhone plans), and if an agreement with Apple is forcing them to do it, then that agreement would likely be illegal and probably doesn't exist.
    • Wrong. Doubly wrong, in fact.

      1: Gross price does not equal profit. If AT&T has two plans, one $40/mo and one $100/mo, but their profits are $10/mo and $1/mo respectively, they'll push you to the first plan. Why? Because that's where their profit is.

      2: AT&T is not a monopoly. Microsoft is restrained from doing certain bundling actions with Windows, because they DO have a monopoly on Windows. AT&T & Apple do not have a monopoly on cell phone service, so if they wanted to they could requi
      • by tgibbs ( 83782 )

        1: Gross price does not equal profit. If AT&T has two plans, one $40/mo and one $100/mo, but their profits are $10/mo and $1/mo respectively, they'll push you to the first plan. Why? Because that's where their profit is.

        What, do you think that AT&T has no control over their own profit margins? If they want more of a profit margin on the Blackberry plan, all they need to do is increase the price. If they increase the price too much, then people will go to the other plan without any need to "push" the

  • by juuri ( 7678 )
    Some "guy" who works at at&t told some "blog" something was crippled as to not show up something else.

    Fancy pants reporting there!

  • From the article:

    We've just received word from one of our friends inside AT&T that the US carrier has been successful in their attempts to lockdown the GPS functionality in their upcoming BlackBerry 8820 so that the only functioning 3rd party software will be TeleNav.

    TeleNav. That would be the mapping service that AT&T will allow, rather than one of the third party ones that one can get for free or at minimal cost, often using Google Maps.

    I wonder if there is a reason AT&T might prefer TeleNav?
    • Anyone that worried about routing should just buy a Garmin GPS and be done with. Sure they're expensive, but over the long run it'll probably pay for itself. Especially at $1.20 per route :-)

      Tom
  • Yet another rumor dissing AT&T and the iPhone. I'm just going to wait for this one to prove false like all the others, but I won't hold my breath for Slashdot to post a follow-up story saying, "Hey, that previous blog rumor was wrong! Just like all the others!"
  • A Blackberry-fanpage "received word from one of our friends inside AT&T"? Come on ...

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